Compass Seminars – Overcoming School Refusal (Brisbane)

A full day in person workshop to help educators, parents and counsellors to understand more about overcoming school refusal

Compass Seminars presents Overcoming School Refusal (Brisbane)

This one-day workshop is designed to assist individuals in the mental health and related helping fields in acquiring techniques to create safety, mitigate stress and combat burnout. The workshop places emphasis on delivering practical strategies that professionals can implement while on shift, with co-workers, and in their personal lives. Furthermore, all techniques taught are highly effective therapeutic approaches that can be applied when working with clients in a therapeutic setting.

Establishing a sense of safety is a fundamental necessity for any practitioner, helper or organisation offering mental health support to individuals dealing with stress, trauma, shame and other susceptibilities. The workshop provides an integrative, holistic, and trauma-conscious approach to assist practitioners in proactively embedding sustainable self-care practices that align with the person-practitioner-work environment. It tackles the essential requirements that practitioners, helpers, and organisations have regarding mentally healthy workplaces and its connection to resilience and long-term effectiveness amidst daily encounters with trauma-inducing circumstances, thereby minimising the impact of psychosocial hazards, compassion fatigue and burnout.

In line with the contemporary practice of an integrative approach to supporting clients, the workshop integrates ideas and activities from several frameworks to provide a rich variety of strategies to suit the unique needs of each client, professional, and organisation.  Based on Interpersonal Neurobiology, Systems Theory, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Trauma-Informed Practice, the workshop covers:

• Understand dysregulation with an appreciation of mechanisms that occur within the brain and autonomic nervous system.
• How dysregulation translates into therapeutic practice.
• Understand how stress and reactivity are contagious with clinical implications and contagion effects on teams and family life.
• Defining stress, burnout, and vicarious trauma.
• Tools to screen for burnout and vicarious trauma.
• Strong knowledge base component and focus on practicing strategies to build a personalised toolkit that can be used immediately.
• Strategies to sustain professionals in their practice as well as developing a toolkit for therapeutic practice:
  • Global strategies to incorporate into everyday life.
  • Strategies to use in the here and now for immediate regulation.
  • Strategies to support co-workers.

Presented by: For over 30 years Joanne Garfi has treated and consulted to teachers, counsellors and parents in a manner that is easy to comprehend, devoid of the jargon and theories, and gets results in overcoming School Refusal. As a psychologist who has worked extensively across primary and secondary schools Joanne has provided treatment, support and specialised training to whole school communities for many years. She has a special interest in the treatment of Anxiety and Panic Disorder and is well known for her work with school refusal, childhood anxiety, behavioural disorders and developmental issues. She also runs a busy private practice and is the author of Overcoming School Refusal: A practical guide for teachers, counsellors, caseworkers and parents.

Date: Friday, 12th April – 9am to 4pm

CPD: 7 hours

Venue: The Glen Hotel, 24 Gaskell St, Eight Mile Plains, QLD, 4113

Register: Online